


The Sacred And The Profane

by neuromantic



Category: Original Work, 天官赐福 - 墨香铜臭 | Tiān Guān Cì Fú - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Gen, and cultural traumas related to religion, kind of vaguely inspired by tgcf, thoughts on divinity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26223043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuromantic/pseuds/neuromantic
Summary: Tian Guan Ci Fu made me have Thoughts about divinity, I'm putting 'em here
Kudos: 4





	The Sacred And The Profane

Minor deities on the side of a temple, portrayed in positions that would be censored if drawn in the modern era. He would be censored, if he dared to be all of himself, in this modern era. And still, they came to him at night, as he lay paralyzed with shame.

“You have seen our faces joyous and cavorting in pleasure. How could you think your desires were shameful?”

“But.” He whispered. “But they say that- they say that it’s wrong and that we-”

“When did they start worshipping themselves in our name?”

***

To the shrine at the edge of the road, he prayed. They had not asked him to pray. They would much rather that he pray and offer money, milk and prostrations at the bigger temples, filled with overwhelming stifling suffocating crowds and noise and-

No one looked at the forgotten temples on a mountain roadside. He liked it when no one looked at him either. And so, he prayed.

***

“You’re saying that thing is a penis? Then why’s it so fucked for me to want one?”

(Perhaps the iconography was more complex than that. Perhaps it was a very serious religious object that he was disrespecting- the same way he disrespected their culture, their traditions, their laws, by daring to want not to be hurt. 

But it was comforting to think of it as something as base- humorous, even- as a penis. Besides, the priests protested a lot but the god himself never said anything.)

***

There was a black cat in the alley between the houses. A mangy old cat with suspicion and hunger in its eyes. He bent down, eyes averted, offering it the bread that he had saved from earlier. 

He stayed that way for a long time. So did the cat. Finally, he dropped the bread and slowly, without looking at it, backed away. Letting it take the offering or not, as it wished.

That night, he prayed to Bastet, a goddess he knew only through fantasy. But she had been written as the cat-faced god, the god who was protective and snarling and feral, and he wanted to be a snarling feral cat under her care.

***  
And when he was stronger and away and free, he did not pray. But he offered comfort to a friend cast out in the middle of the night, he stuck rainbows on his door in defiance of , he captured the beauty of a toad in the middle of a rainstorm and kept the unnoticed things, the snakes, the insects and the deviant in his mind. And so he did not need to pray.


End file.
